This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

First is that Yannick Bigourdan, David Lee and Franco Prevedello, the crack team behind Nota Bene, spent nearly $3 million to open the Carbon Bar in December.

Second is that Carbon Bar is a true design statement, built by architect
Ralph Giannone
out of a Moss Park rehearsal studio for Disney cruise entertainers (and earlier, the original CITY-TV studios). It has the brick walls, steel I-beams and distressed concrete of a fantasy Soho loft mixed with the curved red booths of a classic bistro and a cathedral’s high ceilings. Round mirrors twist on hangmen’s nooses. Studio lights hang from retractable arms.

In front, the wood-panelled bar buzzes with Bay Streeters sipping tequila-based drinks like the $14 Deal Closer, as pink as a pocket square thanks to a Campari splash. On the back wall, a royal box — this one holding a table for two — floats above the open kitchen. If someone doesn’t soon propose on that balcony, I’ll be a monkey’s aunt.

The third thing to know is that, despite the swank impression items one and two create, Carbon Bar is supposed to be a casual Texas-style restaurant that encourages eating with your fingers.

I’m telling you this because the Carbon Bar fails to transmit its concept clearly. It took repeat visits and a followup interview for me to decipher the mixed messages. The room smells like a roadside barbecue stand but looks like a supper club. The waiters wear T-shirts but deliver kid-glove service. (Check out the phalanx of hostesses at the coat check.) The Carbon Bar is pricey, meticulous and more formal than it purports to be. But it’s also fun and, for the most part, tasty.

Here’s another thing: The Carbon Bar is not supposed to be a barbecue restaurant. Sure, the scent of burnt cherry and white oak beguiles from the Queen East vestibule, but the menu is built around zippy Latin-influenced Americana.

The best eating comes from such reimagined dishes as a crab and shrimp cake ($29) laced with coriander and crusted in panko. It is all killer, no filler.

Executive chef Lee and chef de cuisine Hidde Zomer successfully tweak an otherwise classic caesar salad ($11) by using young kale, brioche croutons and sliced beef tongue for a gotcha garnish. They slot crisp splayed chicken skins ($7) in wooden holders as if they were pieces of mail. They make earthy fritters ($7) from mashed split peas. By adding cumin seeds to creamy coleslaw ($4), they build on a traditional Mitteleuropean flavour combination. They add the pop of tiny red
Peruvian peppers
to a refreshing shaved salad ($12).

It doesn’t all work, as with a preciously plated goat papusa ($13) or a wobbly porchetta ($21) one night in desperate need of more crackling.

Still, when the kitchen dips oysters ($7) in thyme-flecked batter and fries them to a turn, good times begin. That same white cornmeal batter transforms brined and buttermilk-marinated chicken thighs into a hot-oil epiphany. The meat is slippery and tender, the coating so crisp it shatters. It is the best thing by far on the pit master’s platter, a $52-for-two spread that doesn’t justify the price.

Barbecue is the Carbon Bar’s weak link. The meats that emerge from the Southern Pride gas-fired smoker can be tough, fatty or dry, sometimes all three.

Pork ribs ($18) are the best exemplar of Lee’s adopted Houston style, a purist approach of just salt, cracked pepper and smoke — no rubs or marinades. He puts two types of molasses-based sauce — one winningly kissed with cider vinegar, the other with espresso — to the side.

The ribs have pink bands from three hours in the smoker. That so-called smoke ring is the closest Lee gets to proving his credentials as a former judge of the
Jack Daniel’s World Invitational Barbecue Championship
in Tennessee. Otherwise the pulled pork is ropy, the turkey breast mealy and the eight-hour brisket as dense as the idiots who block the subway door during rush hour.

“The brisket should be the first thing that gets eaten on (the) platter,” Lee later instructs by email.

“When the brisket cools off, it can appear somewhat tough and fatty.” Diners can ask for replacement brisket.

Correction - March 17, 2014:
This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the name of the drink served at the Carbon Bar as Deal Breaker.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com